Klein on Certainty and Canonical Beliefs

Abstract

In “Epistemic Compatibilism and Canonical Beliefs” Peter Klein argues that we can’t know much about the world around us, but we can know that most of our ordinary beliefs about the world are true.¹ He calls the set of the most obviously true common-sense beliefs about the world around us “the canon”.² The canon includes beliefs such as that there are tables, there are dogs, and there are trees outside. According to Klein, we can’t know any of the propositions in the canon. About them, skeptics are right. But, contrary to what skeptics assert, we can know a general proposition about these canonical beliefs, namely, that the preponderance of them is true. Let us call this general proposition ‘the meta-proposition’. Thus, on Klein’s view, although we can’t know what we might call “specific facts” about the world, we can know that the meta-proposition is true, i.e., we can know that our general world view is correct.